Sweet Miss Lavendar

School
opened and Anne returned to her work, with fewer theories but
considerably more experience. She had several new pupils, six- and
seven-year-olds just venturing, round-eyed, into a world of wonder.
Among them were Davy and Dora. Davy sat with Milty Boulter, who had been
going to school for a year and was therefore quite a man of the world.
Dora had made a compact at Sunday School the previous Sunday to sit
with Lily Sloane; but Lily Sloane not coming the first day, she was
temporarily assigned to Mirabel Cotton, who was ten years old and
therefore, in Dora's eyes, one of the "big girls."

"I think school is great fun," Davy told Marilla when he got home that
night. "You said I'd find it hard to sit still and I did . . . you mostly
do tell the truth, I notice . . . but you can wriggle your legs about
under the desk and that helps a lot. It's splendid to have so many boys
to play with. I sit with Milty Boulter and he's fine. He's longer than
me but I'm wider. It's nicer to sit in the back seats but you can't sit
there till your legs grow long enough to touch the floor. Milty drawed a
picture of Anne on his slate and it was awful ugly and I told him if he
made pictures of Anne like that I'd lick him at recess. I thought first
I'd draw one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I was afraid it
would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt anyone's
feelings. It seems it's dreadful to have your feelings hurt. It's better
to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if you must do something.
Milty said he wasn't scared of me but he'd just as soon call it somebody
else to 'blige me, so he rubbed out Anne's name and printed Barbara
Shaw's under it. Milty doesn't like Barbara 'cause she calls him a sweet
little boy and once she patted him on his head."

Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet, even
for her; and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed she
hesitated and began to cry.

"What notion have you got into your head now?" demanded Marilla. "I'm
sure you've gone to bed alone all summer and never been frightened
before."

Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her
sympathetically, and whispered,

"Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of?"

"Of . . . of Mirabel Cotton's uncle," sobbed Dora. "Mirabel Cotton told me
all about her family today in school. Nearly everybody in her family has
died . . . all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever so many uncles
and aunts. They have a habit of dying, Mirabel says. Mirabel's awful
proud of having so many dead relations, and she told me what they all
died of, and what they said, and how they looked in their coffins. And
Mirabel says one of her uncles was seen walking around the house after
he was buried. Her mother saw him. I don't mind the rest so much but I
can't help thinking about that uncle."

Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep. The
next day Mirabel Cotton was kept in at recess and "gently but firmly"
given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to possess an
uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had been decently
interred it was not in good taste to talk about that eccentric gentleman
to your deskmate of tender years. Mirabel thought this very harsh. The
Cottons had not much to boast of. How was she to keep up her prestige
among her schoolmates if she were forbidden to make capital out of the
family ghost?

September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October.
One Friday evening Diana came over.

"I'd a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go over
to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town.
But we can't get one of our horses to go, for they'll all be in use
tomorrow, and your pony is lame . . . so I suppose we can't go."

"Why can't we walk?" suggested Anne. "If we go straight back through the
woods we'll strike the West Grafton road not far from the Kimball place.
I was through that way last winter and I know the road. It's no more
than four miles and we won't have to walk home, for Oliver Kimball will
be sure to drive us. He'll be only too glad of the excuse, for he goes
to see Carrie Sloane and they say his father will hardly ever let him
have a horse."

It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following
afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover's Lane to the back of the
Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres
of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow
of flame and gold, lying in a great purple stillness and peace.

"It's as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of
mellow stained light, isn't it?" said Anne dreamily. "It doesn't seem
right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent, like running in
a church."

"We must hurry though," said Diana, glancing at her watch. "We've left
ourselves little enough time as it is."

"Well, I'll walk fast but don't ask me to talk," said Anne, quickening
her pace. "I just want to drink the day's loveliness in . . . I feel as if
she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and I'll take
a sip at every step."

Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in "drinking it in" that Anne
took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road. She should
have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it the most
fortunate mistake of her life. They came out finally to a lonely, grassy
road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of spruce saplings.

"Why, where are we?" exclaimed Diana in bewilderment. "This isn't the
West Grafton road."

"No, it's the base line road in Middle Grafton," said Anne, rather
shamefacedly. "I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork. I
don't know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles from
Kimballs' still."

"Then we can't get there by five, for it's half past four now," said
Diana, with a despairing look at her watch. "We'll arrive after they
have had their tea, and they'll have all the bother of getting ours over
again."

"No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we have come this
far."

A few yards further on the girls came to a place where the road forked
again.

"Which of these do we take?" asked Diana dubiously.

Anne shook her head.

"I don't know and we can't afford to make any more mistakes. Here is a
gate and a lane leading right into the wood. There must be a house at
the other side. Let us go down and inquire."

"What a romantic old lane this it," said Diana, as they walked along its
twists and turns. It ran under patriarchal old firs whose branches met
above, creating a perpetual gloom in which nothing except moss could
grow. On either hand were brown wood floors, crossed here and there
by fallen lances of sunlight. All was very still and remote, as if the
world and the cares of the world were far away.

"I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest," said Anne in
a hushed tone. "Do you suppose we'll ever find our way back to the
real world again, Diana? We shall presently come to a palace with a
spellbound princess in it, I think."

Around the next turn they came in sight, not indeed of a palace, but of
a little house almost as surprising as a palace would have been in this
province of conventional wooden farmhouses, all as much alike in general
characteristics as if they had grown from the same seed. Anne stopped
short in rapture and Diana exclaimed, "Oh, I know where we are now.
That is the little stone house where Miss Lavendar Lewis lives . . . Echo
Lodge, she calls it, I think. I've often heard of it but I've never seen
it before. Isn't it a romantic spot?"

"It's the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined," said Anne
delightedly. "It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream."

The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of red
Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered two
dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two great
chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy,
finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn frosts
to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints.

Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate where
the girls were standing opened. The house bounded it on one side; on
the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke, so overgrown with
moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high, green bank. On the
right and left the tall, dark spruces spread their palm-like branches
over it; but below it was a little meadow, green with clover aftermath,
sloping down to the blue loop of the Grafton River. No other house or
clearing was in sight . . . nothing but hills and valleys covered with
feathery young firs.

"I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is," speculated Diana as they
opened the gate into the garden. "They say she is very peculiar."

"She'll be interesting then," said Anne decidedly. "Peculiar people are
always that at least, whatever else they are or are not. Didn't I tell
you we would come to an enchanted palace? I knew the elves hadn't woven
magic over that lane for nothing."

"Oh, that's only part of the spell," asserted Anne confidently. "At
heart she's young and beautiful still . . . and if we only knew how to
unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again. But we
don't know how . . . it's always and only the prince who knows that
. . . and Miss Lavendar's prince hasn't come yet. Perhaps some fatal
mischance has befallen him . . . though that's against the law of all
fairy tales."

"I'm afraid he came long ago and went away again," said Diana. "They say
she used to be engaged to Stephan Irving . . . Paul's father . . . when
they were young. But they quarreled and parted."

"Hush," warned Anne. "The door is open."

The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked
at the open door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather odd
little personage presented herself . . . a girl of about fourteen, with a
freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem as
if it stretched "from ear to ear," and two long braids of fair hair tied
with two enormous bows of blue ribbon.

With this the small handmaiden whisked out of sight and the girls,
left alone, looked about them with delighted eyes. The interior of this
wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior.

The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-paned windows,
curtained with muslin frills. All the furnishings were old-fashioned,
but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious. But it must
be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature, to two healthy
girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air, was a table,
set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies, while little
golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it what Anne would have
termed "a festal air."

"Miss Lavendar must be expecting company to tea," she whispered. "There
are six places set. But what a funny little girl she has. She looked
like a messenger from pixy land. I suppose she could have told us the
road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavendar. S . . . s . . . sh, she's
coming."

And with that Miss Lavendar Lewis was standing in the doorway. The girls
were so surprised that they forgot good manners and simply stared.
They had unconsciously been expecting to see the usual type of elderly
spinster as known to their experience . . . a rather angular personage,
with prim gray hair and spectacles. Nothing more unlike Miss Lavendar
could possibly be imagined.

She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and thick,
and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils. Beneath it was an
almost girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with big soft brown
eyes and dimples . . . actually dimples. She wore a very dainty gown of
cream muslin with pale-hued roses on it . . . a gown which would have
seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited
Miss Lavendar so perfectly that you never thought about it at all.

"Charlotta the Fourth says that you wished to see me," she said, in a
voice that matched her appearance.

"We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton," said Diana. "We
are invited to tea at Mr. Kimball's, but we took the wrong path coming
through the woods and came out to the base line instead of the West
Grafton road. Do we take the right or left turning at your gate?"

"The left," said Miss Lavendar, with a hesitating glance at her tea
table. Then she exclaimed, as if in a sudden little burst of resolution,

"But oh, won't you stay and have tea with me? Please, do. Mr. Kimball's
will have tea over before you get there. And Charlotta the Fourth and I
will be so glad to have you."

Diana looked mute inquiry at Anne.

"We'd like to stay," said Anne promptly, for she had made up her mind
that she wanted to know more of this surprising Miss Lavendar, "if it
won't inconvenience you. But you are expecting other guests, aren't
you?"

Miss Lavendar looked at her tea table again, and blushed.

"I know you'll think me dreadfully foolish," she said. "I am foolish
. . . and I'm ashamed of it when I'm found out, but never unless I am
found out. I'm not expecting anybody . . . I was just pretending I was.
You see, I was so lonely. I love company . . . that is, the right kind
of company.. .but so few people ever come here because it is so far out
of the way. Charlotta the Fourth was lonely too. So I just pretended I
was going to have a tea party. I cooked for it . . . and decorated the
table for it.. . and set it with my mother's wedding china . . . and I
dressed up for it." Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as
peculiar as report had pictured her. The idea of a woman of forty-five
playing at having a tea party, just as if she were a little girl! But
Anne of the shining eyes exclaimed joyfuly, "Oh, do you imagine things
too?"

That "too" revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.

"Yes, I do," she confessed, boldly. "Of course it's silly in anybody as
old as I am. But what is the use of being an independent old maid if
you can't be silly when you want to, and when it doesn't hurt anybody?
A person must have some compensations. I don't believe I could live at
times if I didn't pretend things. I'm not often caught at it though, and
Charlotta the Fourth never tells. But I'm glad to be caught today, for
you have really come and I have tea all ready for you. Will you go up to
the spare room and take off your hats? It's the white door at the head
of the stairs. I must run out to the kitchen and see that Charlotta the
Fourth isn't letting the tea boil. Charlotta the Fourth is a very good
girl but she will let the tea boil."

Miss Lavendar tripped off to the kitchen on hospitable thoughts intent
and the girls found their way up to the spare room, an apartment as
white as its door, lighted by the ivy-hung dormer window and looking, as
Anne said, like the place where happy dreams grew.

"This is quite an adventure, isn't it?" said Diana. "And isn't Miss
Lavendar sweet, if she IS a little odd? She doesn't look a bit like an
old maid."

"She looks just as music sounds, I think," answered Anne.

When they went down Miss Lavendar was carrying in the teapot, and behind
her, looking vastly pleased, was Charlotta the Fourth, with a plate of
hot biscuits.

"Now, you must tell me your names," said Miss Lavendar. "I'm so glad you
are young girls. I love young girls. It's so easy to pretend I'm a girl
myself when I'm with them. I do hate" . . . with a little grimace . . . "to
believe I'm old. Now, who are you . . . just for convenience' sake? Diana
Barry? And Anne Shirley? May I pretend that I've known you for a hundred
years and call you Anne and Diana right away?"

"You, may" the girls said both together.

"Then just let's sit comfily down and eat everything," said Miss
Lavendar happily. "Charlotta, you sit at the foot and help with the
chicken. It is so fortunate that I made the sponge cake and doughnuts.
Of course, it was foolish to do it for imaginary guests . . . I know
Charlotta the Fourth thought so, didn't you, Charlotta? But you see how
well it has turned out. Of course they wouldn't have been wasted, for
Charlotta the Fourth and I could have eaten them through time. But
sponge cake is not a thing that improves with time."

That was a merry and memorable meal; and when it was over they all went
out to the garden, lying in the glamor of sunset.

"I do think you have the loveliest place here," said Diana, looking
round her admiringly.

"Why do you call it Echo Lodge?" asked Anne.

"Charlotta," said Miss Lavendar, "go into the house and bring out the
little tin horn that is hanging over the clock shelf."

Charlotta the Fourth skipped off and returned with the horn.

"Blow it, Charlotta," commanded Miss Lavendar.

Charlotta accordingly blew, a rather raucous, strident blast. There was
moment's stillness . . . and then from the woods over the river came a
multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the "horns
of elfland" were blowing against the sunset. Anne and Diana exclaimed in
delight.

"Now laugh, Charlotta . . . laugh loudly."

Charlotta, who would probably have obeyed if Miss Lavendar had told her
to stand on her head, climbed upon the stone bench and laughed loud
and heartily. Back came the echoes, as if a host of pixy people were
mimicking her laughter in the purple woodlands and along the fir-fringed
points.

"People always admire my echoes very much," said Miss Lavendar, as if
the echoes were her personal property. "I love them myself. They
are very good company . . . with a little pretending. On calm evenings
Charlotta the Fourth and I often sit out here and amuse ourselves with
them. Charlotta, take back the horn and hang it carefully in its place."

"Why do you call her Charlotta the Fourth?" asked Diana, who was
bursting with curiosity on this point.

"Just to keep her from getting mixed up with other Charlottas in my
thoughts," said Miss Lavendar seriously. "They all look so much alike
there's no telling them apart. Her name isn't really Charlotta at all.
It is . . . let me see . . . what is it? I think it's Leonora . . . yes, it
is Leonora. You see, it is this way. When mother died ten years ago I
couldn't stay here alone . . . and I couldn't afford to pay the wages of
a grown-up girl. So I got little Charlotta Bowman to come and stay with
me for board and clothes. Her name really was Charlotta . . . she was
Charlotta the First. She was just thirteen. She stayed with me till
she was sixteen and then she went away to Boston, because she could
do better there. Her sister came to stay with me then. Her name was
Julietta . . . Mrs. Bowman had a weakness for fancy names I think . . .
but she looked so like Charlotta that I kept calling her that all the
time . . . and she didn't mind. So I just gave up trying to remember her
right name. She was Charlotta the Second, and when she went away Evelina
came and she was Charlotta the Third. Now I have Charlotta the Fourth;
but when she is sixteen . . . she's fourteen now . . . she will want to
go to Boston too, and what I shall do then I really do not know.
Charlotta the Fourth is the last of the Bowman girls, and the best. The
other Charlottas always let me see that they thought it silly of me to
pretend things but Charlotta the Fourth never does, no matter what she
may really think. I don't care what people think about me if they don't
let me see it."

"Well," said Diana looking regretfully at the setting sun. "I suppose
we must go if we want to get to Mr. Kimball's before dark. We've had a
lovely time, Miss Lewis."

"Won't you come again to see me?" pleaded Miss Lavendar.

Tall Anne put her arm about the little lady.

"Indeed we shall," she promised. "Now that we have discovered you we'll
wear out our welcome coming to see you. Yes, we must go . . . 'we must
tear ourselves away,' as Paul Irving says every time he comes to Green
Gables."

"Paul Irving?" There was a subtle change in Miss Lavendar's voice. "Who
is he? I didn't think there was anybody of that name in Avonlea."

Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness. She had forgotten about Miss
Lavendar's old romance when Paul's name slipped out.

"He is a little pupil of mine," she explained slowly. "He came from
Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving of the shore
road."

"Is he Stephen Irving's son?" Miss Lavendar asked, bending over her
namesake border so that her face was hidden.

"Yes."

"I'm going to give you girls a bunch of lavendar apiece," said Miss
Lavendar brightly, as if she had not heard the answer to her question.
"It's very sweet, don't you think? Mother always loved it. She planted
these borders long ago. Father named me Lavendar because he was so fond
of it. The very first time he saw mother was when he visited her home in
East Grafton with her brother. He fell in love with her at first sight;
and they put him in the spare room bed to sleep and the sheets were
scented with lavendar and he lay awake all night and thought of her. He
always loved the scent of lavendar after that . . . and that was why he
gave me the name. Don't forget to come back soon, girls dear. We'll be
looking for you, Charlotta the Fourth and I."

She opened the gate under the firs for them to pass through. She looked
suddenly old and tired; the glow and radiance had faded from her face;
her parting smile was as sweet with ineradicable youth as ever, but
when the girls looked back from the first curve in the lane they saw her
sitting on the old stone bench under the silver poplar in the middle of
the garden with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

"She does look lonely," said Diana softly. "We must come often to see
her."

"I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that could
possibly be given her," said Anne. "If they had been so blind as to name
her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have been called
Lavendar just the same, I think. It's so suggestive of sweetness and
old-fashioned graces and 'silk attire.' Now, my name just smacks of
bread and butter, patchwork and chores."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Diana. "Anne seems to me real stately and
like a queen. But I'd like Kerrenhappuch if it happened to be your
name. I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are
themselves. I can't bear Josie or Gertie for names now but before I knew
the Pye girls I thought them real pretty."

"That's a lovely idea, Diana," said Anne enthusiastically. "Living so
that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with
. . . making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and
pleasant that they never think of it by itself. Thank you, Diana."